Someone recently pointed out this site called Brovision.com which a mostly video based site about Japan. There's also a related site, brobe.com which is directed at Japanese speaking people but it's also all video.

The sites are about "personal broadcasting" and it makes me wonder about the future. Will more and more sites like this start appearing? Will there be independent net broadcast sitcoms or series at some point? How about independent news shows? If there was a ton of this stuff would the current news channels disappear because of lost viewership? CNN, MSNBC, Foxnews, ABCNews etc. Would that be a good thing or bad? Those big companies have their problems but they also have the money to fly here there and everywhere to get the stories. They have access to people that it's unlikely independents could get if only because it's much easier to deal with a few small news corp than thousands of indys.

I also wonder, what's the draw in doing this. Right now, putting out your own personal broadcasting probably makes you feel like you are in some way becoming like the big guys. But, if in 10 or 20 years there are tens of thousands of personal broadcasting sites and no big TV corps making TV stars and TV anchors anymore will the glamor of doing it in the first place disappear?

I suppose someone will always be the most popular and I guess some people are already doing it at atomfilms.com it's just that no one yet has made anything good enough to become popular, and, at least in the US, there's the problem of broadband speeds. Here in Japan we finally caught up to Korea in that we have 26megabits for 2680yen a month (about $22). 100megabits is only about $40 a month. That means video based sites actually have some chance of getting an audience here in Japan.

Will the US ever catch up or are we going to become a 3rd world country soon?